Help with a pacifist (vow of nonviolence) artificer

[Buddy76]

I'm planning on building a lawful good pacifist artificer who abhors violence. The character was conceived as a sort of golden age of science fiction optimistic hero (think Asimov's Salvor Hardin and his "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." atitude). He believes that magic items should be used for the betterment of all sentient life.

I was hoping to be a diplomancer, trying to deescalate situations with rational discourse and failing that, use gadgets to resolve encouters through strictly non-lethal means(fiends and other really vile creatures that you can hurt without violating the vow of nonviolence are exempt from that rule, in most cases).

Mechanically, I will probably dip paladin 1(and go artificer the rest of the way) and take able learner to keep diplomacy maxed out. Also, as the post title said, I'm considering taking vow of nonviolence.

So, here is my question for the playground: Is that feasible? I've never been in a game where someone took vow of nonviolence and don't really know how it plays in real gaming situations. I don't want to be a drag on my party and need help coming up with strategies (if they exist at all) to make myself useful without violating my vows.
Thanks!

[teslas]

If I might make a small point first, about the premise:

Lawful Good and completely nonviolent? It doesn't matter, really, how prepared you are; while you might be able to talk/gimmick your way out of 4/5ths of encounters or engagements, you won't get them all. Most lawful civilizations have plenty of justifications for violence, whether they are nearly all extreme circumstances or otherwise. You might be hard-pressed to have a non-contradictory lawful code that is also good that prohibits violence for your vow. Indirectly facilitating violence by coercing others to do it for you is a cheat and you and your DM will both know it, so that's out.

You could argue your guy wouldn't be so heady as to think about this, but you're an artificer. You're not dumb. You would, and you would conclude your own beliefs have holes.

How are you planning on filling those holes?

Blind optimism, and hope your GM doesn't rain on your parade?
Self delusion?
Something else?

edit-
Sorry, I forgot the sentence where I wanted to suggest that Chaotic Good might be easier to make this fly rather than Lawful Good, as then you've got some flexibility. (A Lawful Good society with 100% nonviolence likely wouldn't survive long.)

[Buddy76]

Indeed I was thinking of a very idealistic character, with a kantian approach to ethics (which I recognize is impractical, but I'm going to stop here, lest I veer into real world morals and other verboten topics).

Now, perhaps I should've clarified that although he doesn't like violence, he is not, as you pointed out, dumb. He will resort to it, especially to save others. As I stated in the op, he will harm fiends and other inherently evil supernatural creatures. I do, however, plan on keeping to the tenents of the vow and only engaging in non-lethal violence against humanoids and monstrous humanoids (which is different from no violence at all). I can deal non-lethal damage, stun them, daze them, hamper their movement, put them to sleep, and use various other forms of battlefield control. Do I plan on avoiding that kind of thing as often as possible? Yes. Never use them? No. I think that you're right and a completely non-violent d&d game is implausible at best and impossible at worst.

The character is very analytical and scientifically minded, keeps his word and wants society to be as orderly as possible, so I don't think he fits the description of a chaotic character. He might be neutral good, though. I'll discuss the alignment with my DM.

[MHCD]

If I might make a small point first, about the premise:

Lawful Good and completely nonviolent? It doesn't matter, really, how prepared you are; while you might be able to talk/gimmick your way out of 4/5ths of encounters or engagements, you won't get them all. Most lawful civilizations have plenty of justifications for violence, whether they are nearly all extreme circumstances or otherwise. You might be hard-pressed to have a non-contradictory lawful code that is also good that prohibits violence for your vow. Indirectly facilitating violence by coercing others to do it for you is a cheat and you and your DM will both know it, so that's out.

You could argue your guy wouldn't be so heady as to think about this, but you're an artificer. You're not dumb. You would, and you would conclude your own beliefs have holes.

How are you planning on filling those holes?

Blind optimism, and hope your GM doesn't rain on your parade?
Self delusion?
Something else?

edit-
Sorry, I forgot the sentence where I wanted to suggest that Chaotic Good might be easier to make this fly rather than Lawful Good, as then you've got some flexibility. (A Lawful Good society with 100% nonviolence likely wouldn't survive long.)

I disagree with the premise that lawful alignment on a micro or macro scale is inextricably connected to violence, especially the claim that it is necessarily so more than a chaotic alignment. Enforcement of order, perhaps, when speaking on a macro scale, but that does not in and of itself have anything to do with violence, especially as is defined in the exalted feat.

A meleeficer who uses nonlethal damage works great, but even better is the sheer magical firepower you have for incapacitating and debilitating effects, buffing teammates, and of course, social manipulation. A quick look through beguiler resources in particular can give some ideas, as you can copy all they can do.

[Buddy76]

A meleeficer who uses nonlethal damage works great, but even better is the sheer magical firepower you have for incapacitating and debilitating effects, buffing teammates, and of course, social manipulation. A quick look through beguiler resources in particular can give some ideas, as you can copy all they can do.

That's the kind of thing I had in mind, thanks! I'll check those resources!

[daremetoidareyo]

How munchkinny are you willing to get?

The Oneiromancy (heroes of horror) allows you to: "target your offensive spells at a target's dream self, rather than his physical form. Because this deals mental damage only, it transforms all damage dealt by that spell into nonlethal damage. This effect functions only on creatures that both sleep and dream: Constructs, plants, undead, and elves are immune to this effect. Only spells that target a single creature or specific number of creatures benefit from this effect; you cannot apply it to spells that target an area."

The feat doesn't say that the person need be asleep for the feat to work. So Heroes of Horror offers these three solutions for what happens if you kill a person's dreamself:

1:have characters take mental damage (nonlethal) that corresponds to the physical damage they take while in the nightmare realm.

2: When the character emerges from the nightmare realm, divide her total amount of hit point damage by her level. She takes this many points of Wisdom and Charisma damage (minimum 1), divided as equally as possible between both abilities. Even if the character has healed all the damage she took in the nightmare realm before exiting it, she still takes a single point of Charisma damage if she took any wounds at all during the course of her stay there.

3: When the character emerges from the nightmare realm, divide his total amount of hit point damage by his level. Add 10 to this total. This is the DC of the Will save the character must make to avoid having his depravity score increase by 1 (see page 65 for more about depravity).

Obviously choice number 2 is the awesomest. All you need to do is have every magic thing that your infusions do be affected by this feat. With a charisma and wisdom score of 1s, your opponents are going to have a hard time resisting your diplomancy checks

[Fizban]

Vow of Nonviolence doesn't actually change that much, as long as your allies aren't executing helpless foes. It only applies to humanoids and monstrous humanoids, plenty of the best spells count as nonviolent (imprisoning their mind in body that obeys only your orders is nicer than giving them a bellyache you see), and you can deal as much nonlethal damage as you want

The bigger problem is that you get no real benefit out of Vow of Nonviolence. It's +4 DC on appropriate spells is huge, but as an Artificer you have essentially no direct effects. There's Blast Rod, Elemental Prod, and maybe something at a higher level but I don't think so. Scrolls, wands, staves, Spell Storing Items, no benefit to any of those The vow shouldn't hamper you much, but it's also not worth taking as a feat unless your DM lets you apply it to your artifice. On the other hand if they do it becomes amazing, normally you can't boost DCs on items at all but +4 actually brings a lot of them in line with actual characters.

[Buddy76]

How munchkinny are you willing to get?

The Oneiromancy (heroes of horror) allows you to: "target your offensive spells at a target's dream self, rather than his physical form. Because this deals mental damage only, it transforms all damage dealt by that spell into nonlethal damage. This effect functions only on creatures that both sleep and dream: Constructs, plants, undead, and elves are immune to this effect. Only spells that target a single creature or specific number of creatures benefit from this effect; you cannot apply it to spells that target an area."

The feat doesn't say that the person need be asleep for the feat to work. So Heroes of Horror offers these three solutions for what happens if you kill a person's dreamself:

1:have characters take mental damage (nonlethal) that corresponds to the physical damage they take while in the nightmare realm.

2: When the character emerges from the nightmare realm, divide her total amount of hit point damage by her level. She takes this many points of Wisdom and Charisma damage (minimum 1), divided as equally as possible between both abilities. Even if the character has healed all the damage she took in the nightmare realm before exiting it, she still takes a single point of Charisma damage if she took any wounds at all during the course of her stay there.

3: When the character emerges from the nightmare realm, divide his total amount of hit point damage by his level. Add 10 to this total. This is the DC of the Will save the character must make to avoid having his depravity score increase by 1 (see page 65 for more about depravity).

Obviously choice number 2 is the awesomest. All you need to do is have every magic thing that your infusions do be affected by this feat. With a charisma and wisdom score of 1s, your opponents are going to have a hard time resisting your diplomancy checks

Can't believe I didn't know about that feat before. I'll talk to my DM regarding the munchkin factor. I'll also have to think if that is something my character would do, but awesome suggestion nonetheless!


Vow of Nonviolence doesn't actually change that much, as long as your allies aren't executing helpless foes. It only applies to humanoids and monstrous humanoids, plenty of the best spells count as nonviolent (imprisoning their mind in body that obeys only your orders is nicer than giving them a bellyache you see), and you can deal as much nonlethal damage as you want

That's the sort of clarification I was looking for, thank you!


The bigger problem is that you get no real benefit out of Vow of Nonviolence. It's +4 DC on appropriate spells is huge, but as an Artificer you have essentially no direct effects. There's Blast Rod, Elemental Prod, and maybe something at a higher level but I don't think so. Scrolls, wands, staves, Spell Storing Items, no benefit to any of those The vow shouldn't hamper you much, but it's also not worth taking as a feat unless your DM lets you apply it to your artifice. On the other hand if they do it becomes amazing, normally you can't boost DCs on items at all but +4 actually brings a lot of them in line with actual characters.

Thank you for pointing that out, I hadn't considered it. I'll see what the DM thinks about it and discuss possible solutions with him.

[SoraWolf7]

I ran into a fun combination during a sadly short-lived campaign where I got to be a wolffolk artificer. We ended up in a scenario where we were fighting wolffolk from my homeland, and I was struggling on how to fight them without killing them. Then I had a brilliant idea to put both Bane and Merciful on my weapons. All that delicious extra non-lethal damage on a charging lance as I rode around on my magic steampunk motorcycle.